Extra
[Q: do you believe that a nation should suffer a detrimental cost in order to compensate for wrongs committed by the governors of that nations, or by segments of that nation in the past?]
Suppose you're living under a dictatorship, and the dictators carry out some horrendous acts. So you're living in Stalinist Russia, let's say, and Stalin carries out horrible crimes. Are the people of Russia responsible for those crimes? Well, to only a very limited extent, because living under a brutal, harsh, terrorist regime, there isn't very much they can do about it. There's something they can do, and to the extent that you can do something, you're responsible for what happens. Suppose you're living in a free, democratic society, with lots of privilege, enormous, incomparable freedoms, and the government carries out violent, brutal acts. Are you responsible for it? Yeah, a lot more responsible, because there's a lot that you can do about it. If you share responsibility in criminal acts, you are liable for the consequences.Interview by Brian Lamb on C-SPAN (June 1, 2003)
All is ephemeral, - fame and the famous as well.
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.
Words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details.
PLAYBOY: Earlier, you referred to the U.S. Constitution as "inspiring." Do you endorse all of it - even the right to bear arms?
CARLIN: I have mixed feelings about that. I plan to get a gun if crime gets any worse. I believe my first duty is to survive. And I'm not just talking about criminals coming into my home. I once seriously considered getting a gun to protect myself from the police. If I need a weapon to continue living, I'll get one. And I'll use it.
PLAYBOY: But if violence in our society --
CARLIN: Look, I'm going to interrupt you: There are two ways to think about this existence we have. One of them is that it's Wednesday and it's three fifteen and we're talking here in my home, and at four o'clock I have to leave for another meeting. Now, that's a reality. But there's another reality. We're in the solar system of a second-rate star, three quarters of the way out on a spiral arm of an average galaxy in a thing called the Local Group. And ours is only one of billions of galaxies, each of which has billions of stars. Some star systems are binary, and there could be a planet that revolves around a center of gravity between two binary stars. So you'd have two sunrises and two sunsets every day. One could be a red giant, the other a white dwarf; two different-sized, -shaped, and -colored suns in the sky. And there might be other planets and comets. In other words, fuck Wednesday, fuck three fifteen, fuck four o'clock, fuck the United States, fuck the earth. It's all temporal bullshit. I like thinking about being out there and not thinking about the corporate structure, not worrying about freedom, and not worrying about guns. I chose a life of ideas. That entertains me. That nourishes me. And that's why I run from this conversation.
There is in all of us a strong disposition to believe that anything lawful is also legitimate. This belief is so widespread that many persons have erroneously held that things are "just" because the law makes them so.
None of us can save himself; we are the instruments of one anotherâs salvation, and the only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.
Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives.
The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.
Cut this "cloud" crap. Dropbox is nothing more than a remote file repository. It also provides with a daemon/client which keeps directories in your local system in sync with the remote file repository. Do you also believe that a FTP server is "the cloud"? And that an email server is "something that places your messages in the cloud"? Do you also believe that a website server is "something that places documents in the cloud"? Fuck the cloud and fuck pretentious posers like you, who feel the need to speak in buzzwords and marketing speak to try to lie their way into looking like they have rediscovered the wheel.
The writing of history is largely a process of diversion. Most historical accounts distract attention from their secret influences behind great events. The few histories that escape this restrictive process vanish into obscurity through obvious processes. Destruction of as many copies as possible, burying the too revealing accounts in ridicule, ignoring them in the centers of education, insuring that they are not quoted elsewhere.
By meditating on death, we can experience the shock of being alive."Buddhism Without Beliefs"
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair.
Pleasure is a by-product of doing something that is worth doing. Therefore, do not seek pleasure as such. Pleasure comes of seeking something else, and comes by the way.
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each manâs life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
If you define "niggers" as someone whose lifestyle is defined by others, whose opportunities are defined by others, whose role in society are defined by others, then Good News! You don't have to be black to be a "nigger" in this society. Most of the people in America are "niggers".on the outrage about the song "Woman Is the Nigger of the World" by John Lennon
Also, bear in mind, people ought to be pretty critical about the Nuremberg principles. I don't mean to suggest they're some kind of model of probity or anything. For one thing, they were ex post facto. These were determined to be crimes by the victors after they had won. Now, that already raises questions. In the case of the American presidents, they weren't ex post facto. Furthermore, you have to ask yourself what was called a "war crime"? How did they decide what was a war crime at Nuremberg and Tokyo? And the answer is pretty simple. and not very pleasant. There was a criterion. Kind of like an operational criterion. If the enemy had done it and couldn't show that we had done it, then it was a war crime. So like bombing of urban concentrations was not considered a war crime because we had done more of it than the Germans and the Japanese. So that wasn't a war crime. You want to turn Tokyo into rubble? So much rubble you can't even drop an atom bomb there because nobody will see anything if you do, which is the real reason they didn't bomb Tokyo. That's not a war crime because we did it. Bombing Dresden is not a war crime. We did it. German Admiral Gernetz -- when he was brought to trial (he was a submarine commander or something) for sinking merchant vessels or whatever he did -- he called as a defense witness American Admiral Nimitz who testified that the U.S. had done pretty much the same thing, so he was off, he didn't get tried. And in fact if you run through the whole record, it turns out a war crime is any war crime that you can condemn them for but they can't condemn us for. Well, you know, that raises some questions.
[..]
I think one ought to raise many questions about the Nuremberg tribunal, and especially the Tokyo tribunal. The Tokyo tribunal was in many ways farcical. The people condemned at Tokyo had done things for which plenty of people on the other side could be condemned. Furthermore, just as in the case of Saddam Hussein, many of their worst atrocities the U.S. didn't care about. Like some of the worst atrocities of the Japanese were in the late '30s, but the U.S. didn't especially care about that. What the U.S. cared about was that Japan was moving to close off the China market. That was no good. But not the slaughter of a couple of hundred thousand people or whatever they did in Nanking. That's not a big deal.
Good ideas are not adopted automatically. They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.
Every day we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life..., our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.
We don't make a photograph just with a camera; we bring to the act of photography all the books we have read, the movies we have seen, the music we have heard, the people we have loved.
A man has made at least a start on discovering the meaning of human life when he plants shade trees under which he knows full well he will never sit.
Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage have developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped."Nineteen-Eightyfour"
In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.
When man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys.
The business of buying weapons that takes place in the Pentagon is a corrupt business - ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom. The process is dominated by advocacy, with few, if any, checks and balances. Most people in power like this system of doing business and do not want it changed.
Oh, if only I could tell someone about my pain and misery! Even myself! Perhaps if I could tell myself about it in some new way it might have the power to shed some light on what had happened and on what would become of me.
My departure from the volumes of science was a sin far less serious than that which consisted in having neglected to cast his eyes on the book of life.
Courage does not always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.'
When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."
I can imagine the pain and the strength of my great great grandmothers who were slaves and my great great grandmothers who were Cherokee Indians trapped on reservations. I remembered my great grandmother who walked everywhere rather than sit in the back of the bus. I think about North Carolina and my home town and i remember the women of my grandmotherâs generation: strong, fierce women who could stop you with a look out the corners of their eyes. Women who walked with majesty; who could wring a chickenâs neck and scale a fish. Who could pick cotton, plant a garden and sew without a pattern. Women who boiled clothes white in big black cauldrons and who hummed work songs and lullabys. Women who visited the elderly, made soup for the sick and shortnin bread for the babies.
Women who delivered babies, searched for healing roots and brewed medicines. Women who darned sox and chopped wood and layed bricks. Women who could swim rivers and shoot the head off a snake. Women who took passionate responsibility for their children and for their neighborsâ children too.
The women in my grandmotherâs generation made giving an art form. âHere, gal, take this pot of collards to Sister Sueâ; âTake this bag of pecans to school for the teacherâ; âStay here while I go tend Mister Johnsonâs leg.â Every child in the neighborhood ate in their kitchens. They called each other sister because of feeling rather than as the result of a movement. They supported each other through the lean times, sharing the little they had.
The women of my grandmotherâs generation in my home town trained their daughters for womanhood. They taught them to give respect and to demand respect. They taught their daughters how to churn butter; how to use elbow grease. They taught their daughters to respect the strength of their bodies, to lift boulders and how to kill a hog; what to do for colic, how to break a fever and how to make a poultice, patchwork quilts, plait hair and how to hum and sing. They taught their daughters to take care, to take charge and to take responsibility. They would not tolerate a âlazy heiferâ or a âgal with her head in the clouds.â Their daughters had to learn how to get their lessons, how to survive, how to be strong. The women of my grandmotherâs generation were the glue that held family and the community together. They were the backbone of the church. And of the school. They regarded outside institutions with dislike and distrust. They were determined that their children should survive and they were committed to a better future.
Affirmation
I believe in living. I believe in the spectrum of Beta days and Gamma people. I believe in sunshine. In windmills and waterfalls, tricycles and rocking chairs. And I believe that seeds grow into sprouts. And sprouts grow into trees. I believe in the magic of the hands. And in the wisdom of the eyes. I believe in rain and tears. And in the blood of infinity. I believe in life. And I have seen the death parade march through the torso of the earth, sculpting mud bodies in its path. I have seen the destruction of the daylight, and seen bloodthirsty maggots prayed to and saluted. I have seen the kind become the blind and the blind become the bind in one easy lesson. I have walked on cut glass. I have eaten crow and blunder bread and breathed the stench of indifference. I have been locked by the lawless. Handcuffed by the haters. Gagged by the greedy. And, if I know any thing at all, itâs that a wall is just a wall and nothing more at all. It can be broken down. I believe in living. I believe in birth. I believe in the sweat of love and in the fire of truth. And I believe that a lost ship, steered by tired, seasick sailors, can still be guided home to port."Affirmation"
No movement can survive unless it is constantly growing and changing with the times. If it isnât growing, itâs stagnant, and without the support of the people, no movement for liberation can exist, no matter how correct its analysis of the situation is.
Dreams and reality are opposites. Actions synthesize them.
There was one girl in our school whose mother made her wear a clothespin on her nose to make it thin. There were quite a few girls who tried to bleach their skin white with bleaching cream and who got pimples instead. And, of course, we went to the beauty parlor and got our hair straightened. I couldnât wait to go to the beauty parlor and get my hair all fried up. I wanted Shirley Temple curls just like Shirley Temple. I hated the smell of fried hair and having my ears burned, but we were taught that women had to make great sacrifices to be beautiful. And everybody knew you had to be crazy to walk the streets with nappy hair sticking out. And of course long hair was better than short hair. We all knew that.
We had been completely brainwashed and we didnât even know it. We accepted white value systems and white standards of beauty and, at times, we accepted the white manâs view of ourselves. We had never been exposed to any other point of view or any other standard of beauty. From when I was a tot, I can remember black people saying, âNiggas aint shit.â âYou know how lazy niggas are.â âGive a nigga an inch and heâll take a mile.â Everybody knew what âniggasâ like to do after they eat: sleep. Everybody knew that âniggasâ couldnât be on time; thatâs why there was c.p.t. (colored peopleâs time). âNiggas donât take care of nothing.â âNiggas donât stick together.â The list could go on.
To varying degrees we accepted these statements as true. And, to varying degrees, we each made them true within ourselves because we believed them.
But after awhile I began to understand that oppressed people âjust by being oppressed â suffer serious wounds. You might go into a store, and somebody might follow you around the store, and you would have a choice of how to react: you could confront them and say "Why are you following me around the store?" or you could say to yourself: "Well, I came here to buy some socks, so let me just concentrate on buying the socks." But you still feel the pain. The obvious racism before had affected me, the prisons, torture... my whole life had created wounds, scars in me that in Cuba I was able to find a space to begin to heal. To begin to think, "Yeah, this happened", and I can look at it and see it for what it was but not be there, not be destroyed by it, not be turned into something bitter and evil by it. And not be like my enemies. Because I think that the greatest betrayal that a revolutionary can participate in is to become like the people you are struggling against. To become like your persecutors. I think that is a betrayal and a sin.
What really hurts me sometimes is that thereâs not a lot of consciousness in their music. There could be a whole lot more. Rapping is communicating-it should be an instrument for our liberation. We donât have time to talk about being players and hustlers and gangsters. We didnât come off of the slave ships that way. We need to become proud Africans again and stop running around in Shirley Temple curls talkinâ âbout how weâre pimps and players. A lot of the symbols that are in rap records and videos are indications of decadent consumerism and in a very real sense, those gold chains, hundred-dollar sneakers and T-shirts with a designerâs name on it underline how much theyâve become enslaved by the consumer mentality in the United States-consumer slaves.
Iâll be honest with you. I know a whole more about what freedom isnât than about what it is, cause Iâve never been free.
Eventually, I realized that I had two choices. I could struggle for stupid stuff - for some trinkets and creature comforts - or I could make a choice to struggle for something that would make a better life for myself, my children and their children. You either work for yourself and your people or you work for the oppressor. Those are the two things that all young people in the United States have to decide, basically, and that theyâre not going to participate in their own self-destruction.
Hip Hop can be a very powerful weapon to help expand young peopleâs political and social consciousness. But just as with any weapon, if you donât know how to use it, if you donât know where to point it, or what youâre using it for, you can end up shooting yourself in the foot or killing your sisters or brothers.
Constructive criticism and self-criticism are extremely important for any revolutionary organization. Without them, people tend to drown in their mistakes, not learn from them.
A revolutionary woman can't have no reactionary man.
Rhinocerous Woman
Rhinocerous woman who nobody wants and everybody used. They say youâre crazy cause you not crazy enough to kneel when told to kneel. Hey, big woman - with scars on the head and scars on the heart that never seem to heal - I saw your light and it was shining. You gave them love. They gave you shit. You gave them you. they gave you hollywood. They purr at you cause you know how to roar and back it up with realness. Rhinocerous woman, big momma in a little world. You closed your eyes and neon spun inside your head cause it was dark outside. You read your bible but god never came. Your daddy woulda loved you but what would the neighbors say. They hate you momma cause you expose their madness. And their cruelty. They can see in your eyes a thousand nightmares that they have made come true. Black woman. Baad woman. Wear your bigness on your chest like a badge cause you done earned it. Strong woman. Amazon. Wear your scars like jewelry cause they were bought with blood. They call you mad. And almost had you believing that shit. They called you ugly. And you hid yourself behind yourself and wallowed in their shame. Rhinocerous woman - this world is blind and slight of mind and cannot see how beautiful you are. I saw your light. And it was shining.
No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.
Freedom is the right to grow, itâs the right to blossom, Freedom is the right to be yourself.
People get used to anything. The less you think about your oppression, the more your tolerance for it grows. After a while, people just think oppression is a normal state of things. But to become free, you have to be acutely aware of being a slave.
Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people that were oppressing them.
So we should, I think, stop trying to fool ourselves when we say that we don't care about things, or that we want to help, but we don't help the things that are obvious and directly in front of our face. We should try to work together, I think, to try to build independent structures to replace the parts of the state that have been dismantled.
This is something which is I think highfallutin and difficult for people to grok, but part of the reason that we loose so much in our societies is because we don't have democratic control over the things that matter to us.
So what we need to do is to try to replace those structures. The structures especially that are missing. And that includes stuff that's not very sexy, like child care or education, as well as, you know, open and free base bands for cell phones. It's all related. So I think we have to move from a world where we act, not just a world where we react.